How to Make Money Blogging for Beginners: A Complete Guide to Your First $1,000

Five years ago, if you’d told me I’d be sitting here today making a living blogging, I would’ve laughed in your face.

Actually, I probably would’ve said, “What the heck is a blog? And how does one make money blogging?'”

Five years ago, I was working as an investment analyst at a financial planning firm.

I went into work every day, 9 to 5, dreaded Mondays, and looked forward to weekends that never lasted long enough.

There were a few things I appreciated about my job at the time. Consistent paychecks, health insurance, some of my coworkers.

But for the most part, I was not a fan of the 9-to-5 life. And by that I mean:

Feeling underappreciated and like my work didn’t matterNot having control over my incomeHaving to ask permission to take time offOffice politics (ugh)

Starting a business seemed like the answer to all my problems. But I never would’ve guessed that business would be a blog.

Our Blogging Story

First off, we (my business partner Ben and I) didn’t get into blogging intentionally. Rather, we sort of fell into blogging on accident.

We started our business in 2014. Originally, it began as an investment membership site: people would pay us for detailed stock market analysis and specific insight about where they should invest their money.

Needless to say (since you’re reading this article), that idea failed miserably. In fact, in our first 18 months of existence, we made $29.00.

Obviously, our original idea wasn’t working, so we needed a plan B.

That’s when we stumbled onto blogging. We quickly realized that other people were making thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars per month from their blogs. Our first idea failed, and I wasn’t about to go crawling back to the full-time job I had just quit a year earlier, so we gave it a go.